{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "me: From the debut of Friends in 1994 to the finale of How I Met Your Mother in 2014, their popularity suggested we at least had...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/185025876083/", "html": "<pre>me: From the debut of Friends in 1994 to the finale of How I Met Your Mother in 2014, their popularity suggested we at least had a stable consensus on what an idealized modern life course *should* be: move to the city, fall in with a \u201ctribe\u201d of friends who form the core of your social life. Serially date a lot of people who you ultimately don\u2019t make a good pairing with, but from that develop the ability to correctly identify who you DO make a good pair with, preparing you to make a lasting soulmate match. Likely this is a member of your tribe, if only for the same reason that high schoolers tend to date people from the same school - they\u2019re the ones around that know you.\nalso me: Stable consensus, huh?\nme: Excuse me?\nalso me: By the end of Friends the 34-year-old Ross had seen three different women marry him, the finale is that his soulmate/babymama turns down a career move to stay with him, which resolves both their character issues as established in 1994: HER reluctance to commit to a partner at the expense of chasing some dream of self-fulfillment and HIS frustration that women won\u2019t commit to him, instead chasing some dream of self-fulfillment.\nalso me: Now the end of HIMYM, by contrast, Ted gives up on the soulmate he\u2019s been orbiting for several years and takes the good-enough-and-available option out of a sense that it\u2019s getting time for him to take the next step on his bourgeois life course.\nalso me: But that was just the fakeout ending, the real ending is that the soulmate gives him a chance, once she\u2019s a 50-year-old lonely careerist who\u2019s done with her multi-year phase of sleeping with the manipulative scumbag of the friend group.\nme: ...\nalso me: Had you not noticed that?</pre>"}